I just recently picked up a used G4.5 to play with during the winter months. My question is just how realistic are the renderings on RealFlight as compared to the real thing? If indeed they are realistic, then the easiest one I find to fly on RealFlight should also be the easiest to fly in the real version. Right? And the one I found easiest to fly is not a trainer and, in fact, really surprised me. Should I run right out and buy one?

What one did you find the easiest to fly? I found the big stick easier to fly then the trainers.

Remember that NO sim can emulate all of the problems that will plague you at the airfield.

Realflight and AFD5 have pretty good flight models, but NEVER assume that because you can fly a sim you'll do fine at the airfield.

Instead consider a sim to be a very good training aid.

Once you've mastered the sim, it's time to go out and fly with the help of an experienced instructor and a buddy box.

If you've practiced on the sim, you'll pick things up very quickly.

Also the sim is setup 100% optimal, cg, trim, no wind, no dead battery/out of fuel.

You can dial flight failures into the sim.

This does help, but what you get in the sim will only rarely be what you'll end up with in the real world.

However turning up winds, gusts, reducing fuel levels or battery levels, etc. will help the experience ( by default these tend to be OFF ).

Yet this is only a partial emulation of the real world.

That said....


A couple of years ago I modified an Extra in the sim, to make the rudder fall off during violent manouvers.

I got pretty good at flying the model in the sim w/o a rudder....

A short time after that I managed to smack the tail of my real RC plane on the top of a tree, during the bottom of an outside cuban eight.

The plane was upside down, and the tail hit, sheering off the rudder. The plane was still flying.


Immediately other people saw what happened and came running over towards me to try to help.

I was able to right the plane and shout out "don't worry I got it, I practiced this in the sim!!!"....

Thanks to the sim, I learned how to use the throttle to control yaw and pitch, so I executed a perfect landing landing and having it coming to rest right in front of me... tail-less but none the worst through all of it.


The sim "saved my plane!".

I've had Realflight 3.0-4.0. The one thing I despise about RF, is the UNREALISTIC ENGINE PERFORMANCE built into the motors, especially OS Motors. Since when will a 46fx run 16,000 rpms with an 11x6 or 11x7 APC? or a DA-50 Gas engine run 30,000 RPMs? BALONEY!! to put it nicely. "Get what you pay for?" i don't see that I got it.

to me the take off and landings are unrealistically easy, I can take off the P51 without a hint of rudder, just gas it and go. I've flown several different P51's, and none of them would take off with NO rudder input, for that matter, I don't know if any tail dragger I've ever owned would take off with no rudder input. Maybe with a good strong wind straight down the runway? And the landings are pretty realistic, just you can smack them in pretty hard (no Flare) and not do any damage...landings that would break stuff in real life. The Big Stick fly's pretty close to how I remember mine flying, but pull it back to about 3/4 throttle, as albsurfer pointed out, the engines seem very powerful. I also had one of the Slingers, mine was stock, again it fly's pretty realistic if you pull it back to about half throttle. Maybe if you put a hot brushless on it it would fly like the sim. Those are the only two planes on the sim I've ever owned and flown. It will however get you used to the controls of an airplane.

Now, my biggest problem is perspective. I don't know how else to describe it, but looking at the plane flying on the screen, and never having to move your head or eyes...it all adds up to a different experience...that part you can't learn without actually doing it...but the sticks are the same. The first time you look away from your plane and can't find it in the sky, or fly it into the sun and lose sight of it you will get an instant SICK feeling (and panic), that doesn't happen on the sim.

I've owned just about every sim and I have to agree that the engine performance in RealFlight can be somewhat optimistic. Most of the engines seem to rev 2-3k higher than real world engines. And a change of prop size often seems to have no effect on RF where in the real world it would overload and bog the engine.
It's a lot better in the latest versions but still not 100% accurate.

Having said that I still find Realflight to be one of the best sims.

All SIMS have their flaws and strong points and some suit different facets of this hobby better than others (Helis in Phoenix for example).